#First image credit: HST

[celestialdaily]

The celestial object of the day is Haumea!

This dwarf planet is 43 AU from the sun, making a year on Haumea 285 Earth years. A day, in comparison, only lasts 4 hours. Haumea's rapid rotation, a product of a probable impact that also created its two satellites Hi'iaka and Namaka, is the cause behind its funny egg shape

[thespacewirednews]

Spin me right 'round 🌀

This spiral galaxy, spotted by our orbiting @NASAHubble telescope, is 45 million light-years from Earth. Tucked within its winding spiral arms are patches of glowing pink spots: these represent "H-alpha regions," signs of nebulae where new stars are being formed.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been studying the cosmos from its vantage point in low Earth orbit since it first lifted off in 1990. From determining the atmospheric composition of planets around other stars to discovering dark energy, Hubble has changed humanity's understanding of the universe.

Image description: A dazzling spiral galaxy, with gaseous arms in shades of pink, red, and white. Various stars, galaxies, and other cosmic phenomena fill the background.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team !

[spacenutspod]

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration made history when it released the first-ever image of a black hole. The image captured the glow of the accretion disk surrounding the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the M87 galaxy, located 54 million light-years away. Because of its appearance, the disk that encircles this SMBH beyond its event horizon (composed of gas, dust, and photons) was likened to a “ring of fire.” Since then, the EHT has been actively imaging several other SMBH, including Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way! In addition, the EHT has revealed additional details about M87, like the first-ever image of a photon ring and a picture that combines the SMBH and its relativistic jet emanating from its center. Most recently, the EHT released the results of its latest observation campaign. These observations revealed a spectacular flare emerging from M87’s powerful relativistic jet. This flare released a tremendous amount of energy in multiple wavelengths, including the first high-energy gamma-ray outburst observed in over a decade. The EHT is an international collaboration of researchers from thirteen universities and institutes worldwide that combines data from over 25 ground-based and space-based telescopes. The research, which was recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, was conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, the Event Horizon Telescope- Multi-wavelength science working group, the Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration, the H.E.S.S. Collaboration, the MAGIC Collaboration, the VERITAS Collaboration, and the EAVN Collaboration. The observatories and telescopes that participated in the 2018 multiband campaign to detect the high-energy gamma-ray flare from the M87* black hole. Credits: EHT Collaboration/Fermi-LAT Collaboration/H.E.S.S. Collaboration/MAGIC Collaboration/VERITAS Collaboration/EAVN Collaboration The study presents the data from the second EHT observational campaign conducted in April 2018 that obtained nearly simultaneous spectra of the galaxy with the broadest wavelength coverage ever collected. Giacomo Principe, the paper coordinator, is a researcher at the University of Trieste associated with the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Institute Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). As he explained in a recent EHT press release: “We were lucky to detect a gamma-ray flare from M87 during this EHT multi-wavelength campaign. This marks the first gamma-ray flaring event observed in this source in over a decade, allowing us to precisely constrain the size of the region responsible for the observed gamma-ray emission. Observations—both recent ones with a more sensitive EHT array and those planned for the coming years—will provide invaluable insights and an extraordinary opportunity to study the physics surrounding M87’s supermassive black hole. These efforts promise to shed light on the disk-jet connection and uncover the origins and mechanisms behind the gamma-ray photon emission.” The second EHT and multi-wavelength campaign leveraged data from more than two dozen high-profile observational facilities, including NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope-Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT), the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. This was combined with data from the world’s three largest Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope arrays – the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), the Major Atmospheric Gamma-Ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC), and the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS). During the campaign, the Fermi space telescope gathered data indicating an increase in high-energy gamma rays using its LAT instrument. Chandra and NuSTAR followed by collecting high-quality data in the X-ray band, while the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the East Asia VLBI Network (EAVN) obtained data in radio frequencies. The flare these observations revealed lasted approximately three days and occupied a region roughly three light-days in size, about 170 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth (~170 AU). Light curve of the gamma-ray flare (bottom) and collection of quasi-simulated images of the M87 jet (top) at various scales obtained in radio and X-ray during the 2018 campaign. Credits: EHT Collaboration/Fermi-LAT Collaboration/H.E.S.S. Collaboration/MAGIC Collaboration/VERITAS Collaboration/EAVN Collaboration The flare itself was well above the energies typically detected around black holes and showed a significant variation in the position angle of the asymmetry of the black hole’s ‘event horizon’ and its position. As Daryl Haggard, a professor at McGill University and the co-coordinator of the EHT multi-wavelength working group, explained, this suggests a physical relation between these structures on very different scales: “In the first image obtained during the 2018 observational campaign, we saw that the emission along the ring was not homogeneous, instead it showed asymmetries (i.e., brighter areas). Subsequent observations conducted in 2018 and related to this paper confirmed that finding, highlighting that the asymmetry’s position angle had changed.” “How and where particles are accelerated in supermassive black hole jets is a long-standing mystery,” added University of Amsterdam professor Sera Markoff, another EHT multi-wavelength working group co-coordinator. “For the first time, we can combine direct imaging of the near event horizon regions during gamma-ray flares caused by particle acceleration events and thus test theories about the flare origins.” This discovery could create opportunities for future research and lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the Universe. Further Reading: EHT, Astronomy & Astrophysics The post M87 Releases a Rare and Powerful Outburts of Gamma-ray Radiation appeared first on Universe Today.

[apod]

2022 May 13

The Milky Way's Black Hole Image Credit: X-ray - NASA/CXC/SAO, IR - NASA/HST/STScI; Inset: Radio - Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Explanation: There's a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Stars are observed to orbit a very massive and compact object there known as Sgr A* (say "sadge-ay-star"). But this just released radio image (inset) from planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope is the first direct evidence of the Milky Way's central black hole. As predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the four million solar mass black hole's strong gravity is bending light and creating a shadow-like dark central region surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. Supporting observations made by space-based telescopes and ground-based observatories provide a wider view of the galactic center's dynamic environment and an important context for the Event Horizon Telescope's black hole image. The main panel image shows the X-ray data from Chandra and infrared data from Hubble. While the main panel is about 7-light years across, the Event Horizon Telescope inset image itself spans a mere 10 light-minutes at the center of our galaxy, some 27,000 light-years away.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220513.html

[the-telescope-times]

Hubble Reveals Colors of the “Lost Galaxy” in Supreme Detail

Photo: Galaxy NGC 4535, a barred spiral galaxy located some 54 million light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

Located in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), around 50 million light-years from Earth, NGC 4535 is truly a stunning sight to behold. Despite the incredible quality of this image, taken from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 4535 has a hazy, somewhat ghostly, appearance when viewed from a smaller telescope. This led amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland to nickname NGC 4535 the “Lost Galaxy” in the 1950s.

The bright colors in this image aren’t just beautiful to look at, as they actually tell us about the population of stars within this barred spiral galaxy. The bright blue-ish colors, seen nestled amongst NGC 4535’s long, spiral arms, indicate the presence of a greater number of younger and hotter stars. In contrast, the yellower tones of this galaxy’s bulge suggest that this central area is home to stars that are older and cooler.

This galaxy was studied as part of the PHANGS survey, which aims to clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation, and the overall shape and other properties of galaxies. On January 11, 2021, the first release of the PHANGS-HST Collection was made publicly available.

[spaceexp]

Hubble Snaps Ghostly Galaxy

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. July 24, 2020

A notable feature of most spiral galaxies is the multitude of arching spiral arms that seemingly spin out from the galaxy’s center. In this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the stunning silvery-blue spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 4848 are observed in immense detail. Not only do we see the inner section of the spiral arms containing hundreds of thousands of young, bright, blue stars, but Hubble has also captured the extremely faint, wispy tails of the outer spiral arms. Myriad more distant and delightfully diverse galaxies appear in the background. This wispy barred spiral galaxy was first discovered in 1865 by the German astronomer Heinrich Louis d’Arrest. In his career, Heinrich also notably discovered the asteroid 76 Freia and many other galaxies, and he also contributed to the discovery of Neptune. If you are situated in the Northern Hemisphere with a large telescope, you might just be able to observe the ghost-like appearance of this faint galaxy within the faint constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair).

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit: http://hubblesite.org/ http://www.nasa.gov/hubble http://www.spacetelescope.org/ Text Credits: ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA/Rob Garner/Image, Animation Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gregg. Full article

[therealuniverse]

Spin This image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope shows galaxy NGC 4100. It was first noted by astronomer William Herschel in 1788. The exact distance from here to this galaxy isn’t well known because the galaxy isn’t moving rapidly relative to our location, but the best estimate is that this galaxy is about 22 million light years away, and if it’s at that distance, its size would be about 40,000 light years across, just slightly smaller than the Milky Way.

The blue areas in this image are bright areas that are giving off lots of high energy light, visible in the blue, violet, and ultraviolet wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Those areas are zones of rapid star formation; lots of stars forming in small zones leads to lots of energy released, making those spots appear blue. -JBB Image credit: HST, ESA/Hubble/NASA https://flic.kr/p/2iWi7ND Reference: https://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc41.htm#4144

[starwalkapp]

Rumors of a Dark Universe⠀ ⠀ Image Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA⠀ ⠀ Explanation: Twenty-one years ago results were first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large cosmological constant -- dark energy -- was directly implied by new distant supernova observations. Suggestions of a cosmological constant were not new -- they have existed since the advent of modern relativistic cosmology. Such claims were not usually popular with astronomers, though, because dark energy was so unlike known universe components, because dark energy's abundance appeared limited by other observations, and because less-strange cosmologies without a signficant amount of dark energy had previously done well in explaining the data. What was exceptional here was the seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations and the good reputations of the scientists conducting the investigations. Over the two decades, independent teams of astronomers have continued to accumulate data that appears to confirm the existence of dark energy and the unsettling result of a presently accelerating universe. In 2011, the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The featured picture of a supernova that occurred in 1994 on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy was taken by one of these collaborations.⠀ ⠀ NASA APOD (https://ift.tt/2Zvcof2) via Instagram https://ift.tt/2yDJjCr

[scienceacumen]

The spiral galaxy M91 fills the frame of this Wide Field Camera 3 observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. M91 lies approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices and — as is evident in this image — is a barred spiral galaxy. While M91’s prominent bar makes for a spectacular galactic portrait, it also hides an astronomical monstrosity. Like our own galaxy, M91 contains a supermassive black hole at its centre. A 2009 study using archival Hubble data found that this central black hole weighs somewhere between 9.6 and 38 million times as much as the Sun.

Whilst archival Hubble data allowed astronomers to weigh M91’s central black hole, more recent observations have had other scientific aims. This observation is part of an effort to build a treasure trove of astronomical data exploring the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas in which they form. To do this, astronomers used Hubble to obtain ultraviolet and visible observations of galaxies already seen at radio wavelengths by the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

Observing time with Hubble is a highly valued, and much sought-after, resource for astronomers. To obtain data from the telescope, astronomers first have to write a proposal detailing what they want to observe and highlighting the scientific importance of their observations. These proposals are then anonymised and judged on their scientific merit by a variety of astronomical experts. This process is incredibly competitive: following Hubble’s latest call for proposals, only around 13% of the proposals were awarded observing time. 

Are you interested in finding out what Hubble is observing right now? You can follow the space telescope’s observations in real time at this link.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

[kailashsingh11]

Hubble is Fully Operational Once Again

Posted on December 9, 2021December 9, 2021 by Matt Williams

Hubble is Fully Operational Once Again

In the history of space exploration, a handful of missions have set new records for ruggedness and longevity. On Mars, the undisputed champion is the Opportunityrover, which was slated to run for 90 days but remained in operation for instead! In orbit around Mars, that honor goes to the 2001 Mars Odyssey, which is still operational 20 years after it arrived around the Red Planet. 15 years

In deep space, the title for the longest-running mission goes to the Voyager 1 probe, which has spent the past 44 years exploring the Solar System and what lies beyond. But in Earth orbit, the longevity prize goes to the Hubble Space Telescope(HST), which is once again fully operational after experiencing technical issues. With this latest restoration of operations, Hubble is well on its way to completing 32 years of service.

The issue began at 01:46 A.M. EDT (10:46 P.M. PDT) on October 23rd, when NASA reported that the venerated space telescope was sending error codes, which indicate the loss of a specific synchronization message. This message provides timing information that Hubble 19s instruments use to respond to data requests and commands correctly. The same error codes were issued two days later, indicating multiple losses of synchronization messages and triggering . Hubble to enter safe mode

The Hubble Space Telescope is being released from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990 in this photo. Credit: NASA/IMAX

Throughout November, NASA 19s Hubble team attempted to restart its main computer and backup systems. On November 8th, they announced that they had by bringing the telescope 19s (ACS) back online. They followed by restoring the (COS) and the (WFC-3), Hubble 19s most heavily-used instrument.retained partial controlAdvanced Camera for SurveysCosmic Origins SpectrographWide Field Camera 3

On Monday, December 6th, the team announced that all four active instruments were back online after power was restored to the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). While the telescope is fully operational again, this latest glitch and need for restoration are part of a recurring pattern. Last June, an unspecified issue caused Hubble 19s to stop working, prompting it to enter safe mode. NSSC-1 payload computer

As part of the telescope 19s (SI C&DH) module, this computer controls and coordinates the telescope 19s scientific instruments. After a lengthy investigation and multiple attempts to restart Hubble 19s backup systems, the telescope was restored to full operational status by July 17th. Similarly, back in October 2018, one of Hubble 18s reaction wheels failed t to go into safe mode. But on October 26th, after a considerable effort on behalf of the operations team, that the venerable Hubble had been restored to working order.Science Instrument Command and Data HandlingNASA announced

Steps to the Hubble Constant. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

Given Hubble 19s long history of service and the fact that it runs on systems developed in the late 80s-early 90s, these two incidents have caused their fair share of trepidation. After all, when a 31-year old mission experiences three significant issues that cause it to enter safe mode 13 the most recent of which happened in the last six months 13 one might get the impression it was on its last legs.

And yet, Hubble 19s heat is once back online after experiencing another scare. According to the latest updates from NASA 19s , the team will continue developing and testing changes they 19ve made to the instrument software. These changes (it is hoped) will allow Hubble to continue running science operations if it experiences several lost synchronization messages in the future.Goddard Spaceflight Center

The first of these changes is scheduled to be installed on the COS in mid-December, while the other instruments will receive similar updates in the coming months. In its 31 years of operation, Hubble has been responsible for some of the most profound astronomical discoveries. These include providing new measurements on the expansion rate of the Universe, which revealed that it 19s been accelerating for billions of years (leading to the theory of Dark Energy).

NASA 19s James Webb Telescope, shown in this artist 19s conception, will provide more information about previously detected exoplanets. Beyond 2020, many more next-generation space telescopes are expected to build on what it discovers. Credit: NASA

Its deep cosmological surveys have also led to newer, more accurate age estimates for the Universe, taught us a great deal about the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that reside at the center of most galaxies. It has also been essential to the study of extrasolar planets, often by working in tandem with exoplanet-hunting telescopes like Kepler. It has been used extensively to study the planets, comets, asteroids, and other objects in the Solar System.

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope(JWST) later this month, NASA expects the two observatories will work together throughout the remainder of this decade, expanding our knowledge of the cosmos even further. In fact, some estimate that Hubble could be around until the 2030s and 2040s, where it could assist next-generation telescopes like NASA 19s (RST), the ESA 19s Euclid and PLATOspacecraft.Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

For the second time in the past year, Hubble has shown us that it 19s not done yet!

Further Reading: NASA

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[gentlyepigrams]

Hubble Sees a Cluster of Red, White, and Blue by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts the open star cluster NGC 330, which lies around 180,000 light-years away inside the Small Magellanic Cloud. The cluster – which is in the constellation Tucana (the Toucan) – contains a multitude of stars, many of which are scattered across this striking image.

Because star clusters form from a single primordial cloud of gas and dust, all the stars they contain are roughly the same age. This makes them useful natural laboratories for astronomers to learn how stars form and evolve. This image uses observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and incorporates data from two very different astronomical investigations. The first aimed to understand why stars in star clusters appear to evolve differently from stars elsewhere, a peculiarity first observed with Hubble. The second aimed to determine how large stars can be before they become doomed to end their lives in cataclysmic supernova explosions.

Hubble images show us something new about the universe. This image, however, also contains clues about the inner workings of Hubble itself. The crisscross patterns surrounding the stars in this image, known as diffraction spikes, were created when starlight interacted with the four thin vanes supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai, A. Milone

#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #starcluster

Read more

More about the Hubble Space Telescope

NASA Media Usage Guidelines https://flic.kr/p/2m9WKYW

[spacenutspod]

The very early Universe was a dark place. It was packed with light-blocking hydrogen and not much else. Only when the first stars switched on and began illuminating their surroundings with UV radiation did light begin its reign. That occurred during the Epoch of Reionization. But before the Universe became well-lit, a specific and mysterious type of light pierced the darkness: Lyman-alpha emissions. Even though the early Universe was too dark for light to travel through the opaque gas that dominated it, astronomers have still detected some Lyman-alpha lines prior to the lights coming on in the Epoch of Reionization. Where did it come from? That’s been a significant unanswered question that many have pondered. Lyman-alpha emissions occur in the UV range and come from hydrogen atoms as their electrons transition to a specific energy state. Lyman-alpha spectral lines are part of what astronomers call the Lyman-alpha forest. The forest is a series of absorption lines stemming from the hydrogen in distant astronomical objects. As their light passes through gas clouds with different redshifts, it creates the forest of Lyman-alpha lines. “Providing an explanation for the surprising detection of Lyman-alpha in these early galaxies is a major challenge for extragalactic studies,” the authors of some new research write. The research is published in Nature Astronomy and may have found the answer. Its title is “Deciphering Lyman-alpha emission deep into the epoch of reionization.” The lead author is Callum Witten, a researcher at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge University in the UK. “One of the most puzzling issues that previous observations presented was the detection of light from hydrogen atoms in the very early Universe, which should have been entirely blocked by the pristine neutral gas that was formed after the Big Bang,” Witten said in a press release. “Many hypotheses have previously been suggested to explain the great escape of this ‘inexplicable’ emission.” But now there’s a new cosmological sheriff in town: the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope: humanity’s new favourite science instrument. Image Credit: NASA The JWST was built with the ability to peer back to the Universe’s early days. That was one of the primary drivers of the entire endeavour. The JWST’s ability to sense the photons released by the stars in the first galaxies early in the Universe’s life has opened a new window into the early Universe and is leading us toward answers to many long-standing questions. The JWST has both the sensitivity and the angular resolution to follow ancient light back to its source. “Here, we take unique advantage of both high-resolution and high-sensitivity images from the James Webb Space Telescope Near Infrared Camera to show that all galaxies in a sample of Lyman-alpha emitters with redshift >7 have close companions,” the researchers write in their paper. This is an important point with huge implications. The JWST images of the Lyman-Alpha emitter LAE EGSY8p68 reveal more detail than previous observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST’s resolving power reveals a clump of smaller, dimmer galaxies around the bright galaxies in LAE EGSY8p68 that the HST couldn’t see. The region is a much busier, crowded region with lots of active star formation. “Where Hubble was seeing only a large galaxy, Webb sees a cluster of smaller interacting galaxies, and this revelation has had a huge impact on our understanding of the unexpected hydrogen emission from some of the first galaxies,” said study co-author Sergio Martin-Alvarez from Stanford University. The early galaxies were prodigious star producers and were a rich source of Lyman-alpha emissions. Most of the emissions were blocked by the primordial neutral hydrogen that filled the space between galaxies in the early Universe. What does it tell us that most Lyman-Alpha Emitters (LAEs) are galaxies with close neighbours? According to the authors, it tells us that galactic mergers and their abundant star formation are behind the Lyman-alpha emissions. A galactic merger simulation produced a mock JWST image that looks remarkably like the actual JWST image of interacting galaxies. This figure from the study helps explain some of the findings. The top left panel and lower left panel are two images of the LAE EGSY8p68. The top one is from the JWST, and the lower one is from the Hubble Space Telescope. The more powerful JWST revealed some close galactic companions for LAE EGSY8p68. b to e are images from a galactic merger simulation called Azahar. Two of those simulated images are mock images of what the JWST would see if it were observing a merger. Those two images are very similar to the real JWST image in a. The purple in e shows the density of Lyman-alpha emissions. Image Credit: Witten et al. 2023. The researchers used simulations of galactic mergers and interactions called Azahar to test their idea. Azahar showed that as stellar mass gathered and stars formed in these early galaxies, two things happened. The stars emitted Lyman-alpha emissions, and they created bubbles and channels of ionized hydrogen in the light-blocking neutral hydrogen. The bubbles and channels allowed Lyman-alpha emissions through. This video shows some of the results from the Azahar simulation. Credit: S. Martin-Alvarez This research shows that there were more galactic mergers in the early Universe than we could see before the JWST got going. Those mergers and interactions and the abundant star formation that they spawned are responsible for both creating the Lyman-alpha emissions and creating a path for them out of the dense, opaque neutral hydrogen that dominated the young Universe. In a nutshell, the high galactic merger rate in the young Universe is responsible for the mysterious Lyman-alpha emissions. The researchers aren’t done yet. They’re planning more detailed observations of galaxies at different stages of merging to develop their idea even more. The post The JWST Solves the Mystery of Ancient Light appeared first on Universe Today.

[apod]

2019 August 4

Rumors of a Dark Universe Image Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA

Explanation: Twenty-one years ago results were first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large cosmological constant -- dark energy -- was directly implied by new distant supernova observations. Suggestions of a cosmological constant were not new -- they have existed since the advent of modern relativistic cosmology. Such claims were not usually popular with astronomers, though, because dark energy was so unlike known universe components, because dark energy's abundance appeared limited by other observations, and because less-strange cosmologies without a signficant amount of dark energy had previously done well in explaining the data. What was exceptional here was the seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations and the good reputations of the scientists conducting the investigations. Over the two decades, independent teams of astronomers have continued to accumulate data that appears to confirm the existence of dark energy and the unsettling result of a presently accelerating universe. In 2011, the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The featured picture of a supernova that occurred in 1994 on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy was taken by one of these collaborations.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190804.html

[ourworldofenergy]

More Interesting Energy Stories that you Might Have Missed

Guest blog by Mr. R. U. Cirius: Here are some interesting and somewhat offbeat energy stories that haven’t gotten much media attention that OWOE readers might have missed.

New Cryptocrude

The government of Venezuela, which has been unable to get inflation in the country under control (see new 200,000 Bolivar note worth 0.1 cents), has come up with a new idea on how to monetize their oil resource wealth – they are planning to introduce a variation of a cryptocurrency in the form of digitized oil. Venezuela is purported to have the largest oil reserves in the world, 304 billion barrels, which is just ahead of Saudi Arabia at 298 billion barrels. Unfortunately, most of this is extra-heavy oil that is very difficult and expensive to produce, and the mismanagement by the government has led to a precipitous drop in production over the last decade. The solution: don’t try to produce the oil, sell it virtually while it is still in the ground. Make the money now without having to do any work and leave the messy details on how to produce heavy oil to someone else.

The idea has garnered interest from Canada, another country with large heavy oil deposits that has also struggled with developing its resources, which has been in discussions with the Venezuelan government to do a joint cryptocrude offering that would include the tar sands oil in Alberta.

Avian Turbines

Birds, while an important part of our ecosystem, may not be used to their full potential. People are beginning to ask “could we be utilizing them more?” One company, Birdines, is looking for creative ways to do so. They have been exploring the concept of attaching a small wind turbine onto birds on long flight paths to harness a bit of wind energy.

While it might not seem like a bird could produce very much energy, with multiple flocks Birdines has shown that they could produce a sufficient amount of energy to run their production facility. The big challenge is how to harness that energy. They are working on a number of ideas ranging from wireless transmission to small batteries. As a first step, they are planning to place test turbines on a number of birds at the start of their migration, track the levels of energy generated during flight, and send collectors to bring back equipment for further evaluation. (See Fig. 1.) Engineers have worked tirelessly to ensure that these wind turbines will not affect the birds’ flight or safety. In fact, one interesting finding from their studies is that the turbines actually make the birds more attractive to their mates, which has helped get PETA onboard as a supporter of the effort. Over time, as their design becomes more widely used, they are predicting that it will be possible to power companies all over the world along the flight paths of these migratory birds.

Fig. 1 – Avian Turbine (image by Birdines)

Young Aspiring Female Engineer Merges Robotics and AI

California has its fair share of geniuses but they seem to congregate in the entertainment industries. However, at one dedicated technical high school, Ms. Noel Hayley, an aspiring engineer, has been turning heads with her research and independent school projects. She’s won several competitions for engineering challenges including building bridges out of popsicle sticks, producing energy from ocean currents, etc. But more recently she has turned her intellectual curiosity and technical prowess to robotics and AI.

Building robots using 3-D printing technology has been straightforward enough, but the AI part has presented a number of challenges. Most surprising, one day, in the lab, while listening to a radio segment with Bill Nye and Justin Trudeau (the Prime Minister of Canada), the robotic arm she was working on took on an unorthodox pose (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 – Robotic Arm Malfunction

“I haven’t been able to figure out why this happened. I ran some more experiments with other speakers – the arm behaved properly,” said Ms. Hayley. “Then I ran a different speech by the PM and the same malfunction occurred. Again and again, every time that I played a speech by the PM of Canada, the robot defaulted to this position.”  Although Ms. Hayley was dumbfounded as to this behavior, she started getting requests form Canadians for copies of the robot arm, “as is”. Ms. Hayley is still working on developing the robot for oil and gas work, but in the meantime has started a side business selling copies of the malfunctioning robot to folks in Canada. “For some reason, they especially like these in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland.”

Bio Power to the Rescue!

For some years now, scientists and keepers at the Tennessee Aquarium have been using an electric eel to power the lights of a Christmas tree.  Researchers at Tennessee Tech and Oak Mound National Laboratory have now taken that one step further and believe that they can harness sufficient power from eels for long distance trucking and that the whole system can be biology-based and totally carbon neutral. One huge benefit is the elimination of recharge time during long hauls. Since eels eat virtually anything that can fit in their mouths, the EEL-V driver needs to only stop for a meal or bathroom break, throw a bucket of small fish, shrimp, fly larvae, or any other protein source into the tank and get right back on the road. A photo showing the EEL-V prototype during road tests is shown in Fig. 3 in which the first module contains eels in water, which generate power to propel the truck down the road. The second module is the actual cargo trailer.

Fig. 3 – EEL-V

Organic Storage of Renewable Energy

About a year ago, researchers at a Texas university announced a breakthrough in energy storage that combines solar gathering with thermal release. In the year since, numerous other research initiatives have focused on such molecular solar thermal storage systems. One such promising technology is being developed by Dr. Yudun Phul Mi, research lead at the Coshocton Institute for Carbon Research (CICR). Dr. Mi has announced a novel means of energy storage and quotes: “Renewable energy is great. It’s clean and there is enough of it to power the world. The problem is that it’s intermittent.”  Dr. Mi continues, “We’ve developed a novel means to store renewable energy using organic, plant based starches as feedstock.” According to Dr. Mi and his colleagues, the process of storing energy in starches is simple, and it would also be possible to capture atmospheric carbon into the new material. The key breakthrough that has eluded many researchers has been how to compactly store the new energy-dense material. “Our team,” Dr. Mi continues, “realized that arranging the starches in layers and then subjecting them to pressure and temperature would yield a semi-solid.” In simplest terms, see Fig. 4.

Fig. 4 – Renewable Energy Storage Using Starches

When asked about the energy storage potential, Dr. Mi explained that it was about 24 MJ / kg and that it would store energy for many years. “On a larger scale, we could even bury it for future populations to unearth as needed in 10, 100, or even 1000 years in the future. Of course, we still have to figure out how to burn it without emitting the carbon dioxide and other pollutants back into the atmosphere.” Additional research is being undertaken at CICR to determine whether the process could be modified to yield liquid energy stores that could then be pumped into underground reservoirs or porous sand deposits.

Harvesting the Energy from Crop Circles

Professor Emeritus Albus Dumblebee at HST (Hoagmoles School of Technology) in Edinburgh, UK, who has spent most of his career researching crop circles has developed a new concept for harvesting energy from these circles. Despite claims from some that the circles are created by alien visitors to the earth and from others that such phenomena are hoaxes, Professor Dumblebee believed that there was a more natural basis for the circles. After extensive research and excavation at a number of circles in the UK, he reported that he had found a highly concentrated radioactive source buried under several of these circles. Laboratory testing of these sources shows that they emit a pulsating spherical radiation field and that the perimeter of the crop circle coincides with the location where the peak energy pulse intersects the surface of the earth. Thus, the larger the point radiation source and the shallower it is buried, the larger the manifestation of the crop circle.

With this new understanding of how the crop circles are made, he has developed the concept of a large-scale partial-sphere flux capacitor (see Fig. 5). The partial-sphere flux capacitor will fit exactly on the crop circle which will allow it to capture the radioactive energy from each pulse generated by the buried radioactive source. Professor Dumblebee is currently working on the mechanism to convert the captured radioactive energy into electricity and feed it into the electrical grid. He believes that a field of 5 typical crop circles can generate enough electricity to displace approximately 100MW of conventional fossil fuel driven power plants, thus helping the world move toward a fossil fuel free future.

Fig. 5 – 2D Representation of 3D Flux Capacitor (credit Muller, et.al., and Dr. Emmett Brown)

Canadian Researchers Make Major Renewable Energy Breakthrough

Research from the Cape and the Rock have made a significant breakthrough in renewable power efficiency from wind and wave. At a press conference to reveal their breakthrough, team members summarized the technology as combining a bunny hug or doeskin with a vi-co. “We had many smattes over many chiffes, subsisting at times on bines and jam-busters when we sure g’awn witcha. There was no takitish.” Said another researcher about the team effort, “Lashins tof till I was rawny, but we kept the jinkers out of there so we wouldn’t be huffed: Soon enough it was full flye duckish.” Canadian government officials on hand were like buckle bunnies with new gotch: It was skookum tickety-boo. Research will be published in the upcoming quarterly journal of Timmies.

More Interesting Energy Stories that you Might Have Missed was originally published on OurWorldofEnergy

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Hubble Spots Spirals Within a Spiral

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. April 13, 2020

At first glance, the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image looks to be a simple spiral galaxy, with two pinwheeling arms emerging from a central bar of stars and material that cuts through the galactic center. In fact, there are rings within these spiral arms, too: spirals within a spiral. This kind of morphology is known as a multiring structure. As this description suggests, this galaxy, named NGC 2273, hosts an inner ring and two outer “pseudorings.” Having so many distinct rings is rare and makes NGC 2273 unusual. Rings are created when a galaxy’s spiral arms appear to loop around to nearly close upon one another, combined with a trick of cosmic perspective. NGC 2273’s two pseudorings are formed by two swirling sets of spiral arms coming together, and the inner ring by two arcing structures nearer to the galactic center, which seem to connect in a similar way. These rings are not the only interesting feature of this galaxy. NGC 2273 is also a Seyfert galaxy, a galaxy with an extremely luminous core. In fact, the center of a galaxy such as this is powered by a supermassive black hole, and can glow brightly enough to outshine an entire galaxy like the Milky Way.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit: http://hubblesite.org/ http://www.nasa.gov/hubble http://www.spacetelescope.org/ Text Credits: ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA/Rob Garner/Image, Animation Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Greene. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[rjbailey]

Hubble Spies Galaxy through Cosmic Lens by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Via Flickr: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LRG-3-817, also known as SDSS J090122.37+181432.3. The galaxy, its image distorted by the effects of gravitational lensing, appears as a long arc to the left of the central galaxy cluster. Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us and we see a distorted image of it. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Strong gravitational lenses provide an opportunity for studying properties of distant galaxies, since Hubble can resolve details within the multiple arcs that are one of the main results of gravitational lensing. An important consequence of lensing distortion is magnification, allowing us to observe objects that would otherwise be too far away and too faint to be seen. Hubble makes use of this magnification effect to study objects beyond those normally detectable with the sensitivity of its 2.4-meter-diameter primary mirror, showing us the most distant galaxies humanity has ever encountered. This lensed galaxy was found as part of the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey, which discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Allam et al. #NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy Read more More about the Hubble Space Telescope NASA Media Usage Guidelines